Posted on 10/17/2015 11:46:23 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
It’s enough to make any Wisconsin taxpayer sick.
For 40 years, state legislators have enjoyed a special benefit that not only grants them sick leave but also allows them to bank all unused sick days and use the cash value of those days to pay for health insurance after they retire from the Legislature.
“It’s a health-care golden parachute for legislators,” said State Rep. David Steffen, R-Green Bay.
Because lawmakers aren’t required to call in sick when they miss a day in the Capitol, few ever use any of their sick leave. The unused days pile up over the years, and the average lawmaker is entitled to tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars by the time they retire.
It’s estimated that serving and retired lawmakers have $3.4 million available to them through this benefit.
“People don’t realize this is part of our compensation package as legislators,” Steffen told Wisconsin Watchdog. “It really doesn’t make sense, considering our unique employment situation with the state and the taxpayers.”
“I’m not comfortable with a public servant being able to walk away with over $100,000 in benefits, especially when it’s not transparent the public.”
Steffen, a freshman legislator, has made ending this sick leave benefit a priority.
“In my campaign I promised I would address this with the first bill I wrote,” Steffen said.
The Assembly hasn’t yet taken up that bill, AB 233.
That lack of progress doesn’t surprise Steffen’s Republican colleague from Green Bay, State Sen. Robert Cowles.
Since 2007, Cowles has repeatedly introduced or co-sponsored bills that would eliminate the benefit.
Until this year, the Senate took up none of those bills.
“Nobody argued against them. People against them just hide and sidestep around them,” Cowles said.
Cowles is more optimistic about this year’s bill.
“We actually had a hearing and an executive session. There had never been a hearing before,” Cowles said.
SB 183 passed the Committee on Government Operations and Consumer Protection with only one vote against it.
Sen. Nikiya Harris Dodd, D-Milwaukee, cast the sole vote against SB 183. Harris Dodd claimed she was concerned the bill might be the beginning of an effort to restrict sick leave benefits for all state employees.
Both Cowles and Steffen reject that reasoning.
“This is only meant to touch legislators,” Cowles explained.
“I would not support any initiative to remove sick leave from any other state employees,” Steffen said.
Steffen believes a new approach this year could win the necessary votes to end the sick leave benefit.
Both the Assembly and Senate versions of the bill would eliminate sick leave for legislators in the future but allow them to receive the cash value for the unused sick leave already accrued.
“It’s a political reality that I don’t think there’d be any possibility of it passing if I said everyone is losing not only future sick leave but also previously accrued sick leave,” Steffen said.
But getting his fellow legislators to give up even that much is still a tough sell, according to Cowles.
“All you can do as a legislator is introduce your proposal, make your argument and do the best you can. Some things make it, some things don’t,” Cowles said.
“I hope that this makes it. I think it’s the right thing to do.”
RELATED: Colorado lawmakers’ per diem payments boost their pensions
A SICK BENEFIT: Wisconsin lawmakers never have to use sick leave to take a day off, but they can stockpile those unused sick days to later pay for their health insurance.
FReep mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
Had a friend who worked as an intern for Strom way back when. Said he was given a CC and said dont ever sweat using it. It’s all covered.
Both parties at the state and federal level are disgusting.
I dont know if he reads any of this and maybe i’m making a fool of myself but i will post this nonsense to Trump’s facebook so at least at the Federal level maybe he can change some of this garbage.
Probably whistling into the wind with 10,000 posts a day.
remind my of a Bruce Springsteen song lyric (i know he’s left wing garbage but i like his songs)
“spend your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets”
Disclaimer: Jesus is my religious savior, I’m talking political. Just so no one misinterprets.
These current Legislative criminals vote themselves and their families total financial support at the working man's expense. The support will go on for several generations in some instances. They go to their capitals and eat, drink, drug, travel, copulate with boys, girls, men and women, evacuate their bowels and snore all at our expense. They go and make oppressive laws, rules and regulations favoring themselves and their corrupt buddies.
How long are we going to stand for such foul conduct?
WISCONSIN LAWMAKERS' stockpile unused sick days to later pay for their health insurance. COLORADO LAWMAKERS' per diems boost their pensions.
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TAX-PAYING AMERICANS NEED TO GO THIS ROUTE to nail greedy govt officials in Wisconsin and Colorado and people like John Boehner, Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch labeling taxpayers "terrorists," Bill and Hillary Clinton imperiling taxpayers' ntl security, Lois Lerner and John Koskinen targeting taxpayers, all the criminal members of Congress, and other factotums on the govt payroll.
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BACKSTORY The 1980 Georgia General Assembly was concerned about “the increasing sophistication of various criminal elements on the public payroll” (and those in elective and appointive office). The GA Assembly then adopted the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), patterned after a similar federal law.
(RICO is routinely used to try to prove that a legal business was being used for illegal means, and, in at its inception, RICO was used to prosecute drug traffickers or organized crime members).
In recent years prosecutors have applied RICO to crooked government officials: (1) those accused of using their public offices for personal gain, and, (2) tax-paid officials of govt agencies using public monies to flout the law.
To bring a case under Georgia’s RICO law, there must be at least two underlying felonies — such as fraud, bribery, witness tampering (among other felonies).
RICO allows prosecutors to include multiple defendants charged with various crimes in the blanket indictment, and to charge that govt employees, publicy-funded and publicly-sanctioned entities were allegedly part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
EXAMPLE A govt official commits two felonies by (1) accepting, and, (2) filing falsified documents.
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HERE'S THE PATHWAY TO LAUNCH---Texas took the lead w/ 26 state AG's, successfully arguing that Obama's beatified DACA/DAPA's were made more desirable employees than US citizens.
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Any public official using tax dollars to flout that law is a lawbreaker: in cases where govt officials on the public payroll not giving public notice is a violation at the federal level of the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act, which requires notice in the Federal Register. Laws demand that taxpayers have the opportunity to submit views in writing.
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NOTE If proof is established that RICO'ed criminal public officials impaired the commercial and economic activity of the region, that could also be prosecutable under the Hobbs Act.
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PRIME RICO TARGETS Boehner and his Congrssional buddies are complicit in the massive fraud, waste, and criminal use of tax dollars......and the flagrant abuse of taxpayers. They could have reeled in arrogant govt agencies conducting criminal activities (EPA, IRS, BLM, HUD, DOE and DOL). They could have defunded the criminal enterprise called "Obamacare" and the Planned Parenthood parasites living the high life w/ our tax-dollars....but to taxpayers' eternal disgust....they didn't.
LOL, that’s SOP for Illinois government.
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